In Between
by Ripki
Summary: A collection of memories, now forever lost. How Lily grew up in the seaside.


** In** **Between **(or a collection of memories, now forever lost)

Her grandmother had a cottage by the sea. She lived there in the summer, and usually Lily and Petunia spent two weeks of their summer holiday there. They shared the small bedroom in the attic, and they could see the sea from their bedroom window.

Lily loved it there.

**i**

She sits in the back garden, pulls weeds into a little yellow plastic bucket, helps grandma pull out the bad plants. Her hands are full of dirt and the seagulls go around and around crying.

Before, she woke up in the middle of the night, the attic room dark and strange. She was afraid, missed mom and dad. She crawled into Tuney's bed and snuggled closer to her sister.

And now there is little round bees, circling around grandma's red roses and buzzing. Inside, the wooden chest, a real treasure chest, waits with treasures inside.

**ii**

Lily runs fast and Petunia counts with her eyes closed _ten eleven twelve _and isn't allowed to peek. Lily runs fast and grandma's porcelain cat falls down from the mantelpiece. The cat falls and falls and falls and then it slows down. A blink, and it's back on the mantelpiece again.

Lily stands like porcelain herself, heart beating furiously. _Ninety-nine, hundred! _Tuney finds her still standing and staring. She points, whispers, the cat is real.

It's not a real cat Lily, it cannot move, her sister scoffs. Lily doesn't argue back, but she knows: the porcelain cat is a _magic _cat.

**iii**

Sometimes, it is chilly in the mornings and the grey sky hangs low above the cottage, slipping closer to the ground. Waves are big and rush to the shore in continuous crash. Lily climbs the cliffs, the wind tearing her clothes and hair into a wild dance. Her fingers tingle and itch, waving patterns in the air.

**iv**

When Petunia turns fifteen, she doesn't go to the Rose Cottage. She can't leave her friends for two whole weeks, and Grandma has always preferred Lily over her anyway. Lily goes by herself and it's strange, it's nice. Quietly and slow, time turns. It turns slower when there are two breathing instead of three.

She wakes to the sounds of the sea, grandma humming downstairs as she makes breakfast. Long, lazy mornings turn into sunkissed days, walks to the beach or the cliffs or the village. Afternoons she spends in the garden, words drifting in her head, spellbooks and novels and newspapers mingling together amiably.

(Once she picks up an abandoned romance novel at the railway station on her way to the coast. She doesn't dare read it on the train; she saves it for those days she packs a picnic basket and stays all day in the nearby cliffs, wind dragging her hair every which way. She thinks about being not alone there, about kissing someone, their hair mixing together.)

In the evenings, grandma knits in front of a fire. She always starts a fire, even if the stone walls are still warm from the hot summer sun. Lily tries to knit too, and she draws or writes postcards and letters home. Grandma asks questions of Hogwarts, her friends, everything. She likes to hear about magic. Lily tells her much, but not everything.

**v**

_This summer_, she thinks. When it was just the two of them in the Rose Cottage, it was the happiest Lily has ever been there. Maybe happiest she has ever been anywhere, she thinks, coming back by herself, the train carrying her back home, the brilliant blue vanishing behind the green. It's sometimes hard to remember previous years, time going so fast and yet so slow, memories muted and blurred, like an obliviate gone wrong. But she would remember this summer, carry the memory close and cherished, those two weeks with her forever, like a good luck charm.

**vi**

Lily has her first kiss on the cliffs near her grandma's cottage. Paul, a local boy from the village, has been keeping her company most of the days she has been there. He has shown her a lot of places she didn't know existed, the odd shaped rock further down the beach, the little creek behind the church.

He is a year older than her, funny and animated and a little clumsy. He has short brown hair and freckles. Lily likes how he looks and how he waves his hands as he speaks. He tells her amusing stories about the people in the village, about his teachers and school friends. When he asks, Lily tells she goes to a boarding school in Scotland where nothing ever happens.

The day before she is due to go back home he walks her back to the cottage. They have been walking around all day, talking and laughing. He takes hold of her hand on the way back and she is nervous, exited. They make plans to meet again the next summer. Then he kisses her, a short, soft press of his lips on hers.

Lily smiles the entire train ride back home.

**vii**

The cottage is small and there are only two places for a guest to sleep: sitting room's couch or Petunia's bed in the attic room the girls have always shared. The couch is old and lumpy and Severus' feet stick over its arm uncomfortably. He has grown tall suddenly, his form lanky, feet long. He seems uncomfortable in his own skin, always half hiding, turning into nooks and shadows, away from people. Although he assures that the couch is fine, grandma takes pity on him. After all, they are still children and best friends.

The first night they slip into their beds in half darkness, without looking at each other, the moon a huge silver circle above the sea. They say goodnight and lie facing the low ceiling. Lily can hear him breathing, quiet but deep. It is a different sound from Tuney's snuffle, from her brief half breaths before slowing into sleep. Lily listens to him, tries to match her own breathing to his. It feels like they are impossibly close to one another, although between them is a space as wide as a moon's shadow.

**viii**

Severus stands by her discarded shoes, holding their picnic basket, looking awkward and out of place.

"Come on! Take your shoes of, the water's warm!"

He looks around as if to see if there are any other people around, but they are alone. Just the two of them and the whole wide world.

"Come on!" There is a curious energy running inside her skin, like a jolting electric shock. She wants to run along the waterline, fast and away. She waits a couple of seconds, then a couple of more and then she breaks into a run.

The water flies high as her feet sink into the wet sand; the water flies high to touch her thighs and soak the hem of her green dress. She runs until she is out of breath.

When Lily turns around, Severus is a small figure in the distance, standing near the waterline. As she walks leisurely back, chest still heaving and lungs trying to draw air, he grows larger and larger. His feet are bare, but he is not touching the water. Just looking at it, toes firmly embedded under the sand.

"This is the seaside. You must at least get your feet wet." She walks to him and when she is near enough, kicks at the water. A few droplets land on his jeans.

"What has gotten into you? Like you are on drugs." He eyes her solemnly, but she knows him and how to look for that small upturn of lips, overlooked by anyone else. He is secretly amused.

"Everything here – it's so marvellous. Doesn't it get to you?" She can feel her own smile widen, the energy inside her sated but still humming.

"Do you want to run like a headless chicken some more or do we eat our lunch?" He steps back to where the picnic basket rests little lopsidedly, his sneakers and her sandals side by side next to it.

They eat their lunch, lemonade and ham sandwiches and strawberry cupcakes, while looking out to the sea, the sun high and warm, the sand almost too hot under them. They talk of this and that, of nothing of importance, the silences in between comfortable and languid.

After, they lie on the sand, the sky so bright Lily has to close her eyes or go blind. The sound of the sea is a pleasant rush in her ears, a constant murmur. She drifts away with the water, melts into the sand.

"I have never been to the seaside." As she is nearing the edge of sleep, his voice floats soft and careful to her consciousness. "You are right. It is marvellous."

**ix**

The sun blazes and the sea dazzles and seagulls call to each other crying _I am here_. Grandma's voice is fainter, her steps slower, but she is still the same, humming and knitting and asking. She asks how Lily's Owls went, what new spells she has learned, how her friend Severus is doing. Lily's answers are short. She doesn't want to talk.

She is afraid if she talks, she'll never be able to stop. She is afraid of the words coming out of her.

One evening, after too many of Lily's curt, evasive answers, grandma puts her knitting to the side, and says _love, what is the matter_. And when she gets the one word out through tears, _everything_, grandma doesn't ask anything more, just holds her in a furious hug.

**x**

Just before Lily's summer holiday, the one she has been eagerly planning with Mary, Mrs. Higgins goes to investigate why her neighbour's kitchen light has burned all night. She finds Lily's grandmother on the kitchen floor, already hours dead. In the bedroom there is a half packed suitcase and on the kitchen table a note that lists all the things grandma still has to do before leaving to Rose Cottage for the summer.

**xi**

She doesn't know why she goes there. Suddenly she has to see, with her own eyes, the cottage empty and no one waiting at the door.

She thought she had already learned this lesson, but it still strikes her fresh again: the truth is always more horrible than any imaginings. The curtains are drawn and the fireplace cold. There is a layer of dust on every surface; the air smells damp and stale. The walls and floors and rooms are empty and desolate. The once so clean and bright place has turned foreign and cold.

And there is no one there. She is quite alone.

**xii**

The sweltering day breaks with thunder, the ink dark clouds rolling over the sea. The light disappears suddenly and the cottage plunges into shadows. Lily goes into the sitting room and thinks that she should light the lamps. It's too warm for the fireplace to be lit, the heat of the day still embedded deep into the clay, to the roof.

The downstairs is empty and silent. It will rain soon. She looks out the window; the cliffs are a sharp dark shape in the distance, the garden twisting and groaning in the rough wind. A sudden bright thread of light and a moment later thunder booms, coming closer. Then the rain splatters against the windowpane, the sound like a shout in the silent darkness.

A figure runs through the garden, the back door thuds and there are steps in the kitchen. Something rustles and something closes. Then it's only the sound of rain again. Lily stays in front of the window looking out, but what she is looking, she can't tell.

There is the smallest of sounds and Lily is aware that he is standing in the open doorway, looking at her. He doesn't say anything. The rain grows louder, the water obstructing the view, blurring the glass. He comes into the room, comes closer until he is standing right behind her. She can feel his breath against her bare neck.

When she turns his face is made of different shades of shadow, the slope of his nose, the line of his jaw the most distinguishable in the dark. His black hair is wet, plastered to his forehead, covering his eyes. His t-shirt is wet too, like a second skin. He must be cold.

"Are you cold?" The words escape without her notice, shattering the hypnotizing silence between them.

"No." He shifts his feet as if he is going to move, but he doesn't. He stays where he is. "Why are you standing in the dark?"

"I don't know. Why are you?" She cannot help but smile. They are an odd pair.

"You're here."

He is here because she is here. That has hold true since the day she came here from her grandmother's funeral and he followed. Maybe it has been true a lot longer than that.

She knows she should say something. Say that she is sorry, although she doesn't know if she really is or if she is only sorry for herself. She could say that she forgives him, and although it would be the truth it would also be a lie. She could tell how much she misses him and that she wishes they could still be friends, but that wouldn't help anything, would be giving away too much. She could talk about the future, how she is certain that they are headed for war and that terrifies her and she doesn't know where she'll be, what she is going to do. She can't say any of these things.

So she says nothing and kisses him instead.

**xiii**

It goes like this: a touch there, a kiss here, and suddenly the moment has moved forward, the scene is slightly different, like they have lost some time somewhere, between that touch and the next. It's disconcerting. Like a progression of closely taken muggle photographs, the movement from picture to picture obvious, but outside the frame. The mind has to make the connection, link the order, and what comes next? A flash, a bright short flash of the camera or maybe lightning, and she can see clearly the scene: her hand on his back, his shoulder blade under her fingers, and when did it happen?

They move, stumble up the stairs, because she is not doing this on her grandmother's bed. They are steering each other, bumping into walls and furniture like they are drunk, and maybe they are, maybe they should be. She feels like she is, but then again not. The gin they drank secretly on that one Christmas holiday, it had made her tipsy and giggly and then very, very sick. She is maybe a little tipsy, although she hasn't drunk anything, but she most certainly is not giggly and this feels very much the opposite of that horrible hangover. Although now that she thinks about it, she almost does giggle, wants to, because it is pretty funny, so utterly ridiculous, how clumsy they are, both of them clearly inept and inexperienced in this.

Both of them are new to this. In this at least, they are on even ground.

Flash, and they are on her bed. No, they are on Petunia's bed, the bed that has been empty so many summers, that was empty last night. She lies on that bed, her own bed across from it empty, and she is tugging and pulling until he crashes on top of her and she can wrap her legs around him, feel him against her all over.

This is the first time, she thinks. The first time and the last. This is the end. The moment we are closer to each other than we have ever been, and still so far away. You are here, in me, and I am in you, and I am also away from you, going away, going. Gone.

**xiv**

There is an empty space between the past and the future. Everything is open, possible, although some things are more probable, more evitable. But the road has not been chosen yet, the direction clear but not definite. She can change her mind. She can be whatever she wants. She has that power.

Behind the green comes the blue. _The Sea_! She wants to shout it aloud for all the train to hear.

The cottage is waiting her, the slant of its roof a familiar shape in the distance. The wild roses greet her at the door. It is hers now, Petunia didn't want it, has taken grandma's jewellery and furniture instead. As she cleans the place, airs the bed sheets and wipes the floor, she imagines the cottage full of life. One day she will bring her own family here. Her children will play in the garden and race each other on the beach. They will sleep in her old attic room and watch the sea from their window.

They will be happy here.

fin.


End file.
